The Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System has finally approved the request of Manila Water Co. Inc. to extend its concession agreement by another 15 years from 2022 to 2037, Manila Water president Jose Rene Almendras said yesterday.

Brussels, 15 April 2009 (ITUC OnLine): A trade union initiative for integrating social justice within the transition to a low carbon economy has been launched by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 

Many Filipinos and other workers in the Asian region are still living poorly, trying to make both ends meet with P90 a day, the International Labor Organization (ILO) reported Tuesday.

Happiness could benefit your health more than giving up smoking. In the Scottish Borders they are trying out a new and quite unusual kind of medicine – happiness.

Commissioner Louis Michel, member of the European Commission responsible for Development and Humanitarian Aid, said in Brussels that “Europe has already made humanitarian responses to the food crisis through emergency aid. The “Food Facility”is the development response – 1 billion euros over 3 years to get agriculture back on its feet.

MANILA, Philippines – Publicly traded Apex Mining Co. Inc. is cutting costs by laying off 150 employees – including managers –out of its 1,955 workers at the Maco mine in Compostela Valley in Mindanao.

MANILA, Philippines – Youth groups said yesterday the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) should investigate schools increasing their “miscellaneous” fees, not just monitor tuition hikes.

Dear Professor Cruz: I wished you did not say “(i)t is clear that we have no choice but to add at least one more year to our 14-year education cycle” (Mini Critique, “High School in College”, Philippine STAR, April 2, 2009, p. A-17). People tend to take you authoritatively.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US recession has deepened, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday, as fresh data showed industrial output slumped to a decade low in March and annual inflation fell for the first time in 54 years.

MANILA, Philippines – Agriculture Secretary Arthur C. Yap said yesterday that the Philippines well do well to delay by five years the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) which is scheduled for implementation next year.

MANILA, Philippines – Broadcast giant GMA Network Inc. and energy firm Aboitiz Power Corp. (APC) are the two new entrants to the Philippine Stock Exchange’s (PSE) elite roster of listed companies in the PSEi, the main index of overall stock market performance.

MANILA, Philippines – As inflationary pressures drop this year, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) decided yesterday to cut its policy rates by another 25 basis points, bringing the cumulative reduction to 150 basis points since December 2008.

The global financial crisis has forced Philippine economic managers to lower the country’s economic targets from 2009 until the end of President’s Gloria Arroyo’s term in 2010 and beyond.

It’s becoming more evident that this crisis is not going to be as bad as feared—it’s going to be worse, the news that comes out each day is of ever worsening conditions. Now the expectation is that the world economy will shrink by 1 percent this year. A recovery in 2009 is no longer a…

Local investors are less confident about the country’s economic situation in the first three months of the year, saying it will neither get worse nor get better anytime soon, a survey revealed Thursday.

WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund on Thursday forecast a prolonged, deep global recession in a crisis “nobody is escaping,” with recovery slow and difficult.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has declared April 21 to May 1, 2009 as International Labor Organization (ILO) Week, Malacañang said Friday.

PARIS (AFP) — These are dangerous times: suicide rates go up in the spring and during an economic downturn, an analysis of suicide trends published Friday shows.

The last voyage of the ship “Otapan” to a Turkish ship breaking yard last July was a victory for “pre-cleaning” advocates of reducing the human and environmental dangers inherent in ship dismantling and recycling. But does it also lead to decent working practices? Last week, experts from the ILO, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and…

NINE out of 10 Filipinos in Metro Manila have cut down on their spending out of fear they will make less money as a result of the economic crunch, but are optimistic the economy will get better, a survey says.

The Final Report of the Presidential Task Force for Education (PTFE) contains several recommendations to reform our educational system. Many of these recommendations are not new, but were widely discussed and agreed upon in earlier surveys, such as the Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM, 1992) and the Presidential Commission on Educational Reform (PCER, 2000).

MANILA, Philippines – An educator-turned-lawmaker has hailed the passage of a new law aggressively expanding a government-subsidized student jobs plan, saying it would help put in check rising youth unemployment.

MANILA, Philippines – In choosing a career path, do not go for popular, but for “employable” courses.

A new report from the Guttmacher Institute and the University of the Philippines Population Institute reveals that low levels of contraceptive use in the Philippines result in high rates of unintended pregnancy and a broad range of negative consequences for women, their families and the national health care system.

CHEAPER POWER: After filing a bill lowering royalties on indigenous sources of energy to reduce the retail cost of electricity, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile now wants to grant tax exemption to distribution utilities to further cut power costs.

MANILA, Philippines – Some 2,600 mothers and 52,000 babies died in the country last year due to lack of sexual and reproductive health knowledge, a leading New York-based policy research group revealed in a study.

MANILA, Philippines – Public school teachers’ groups are opposing a move by the House of Representatives to cut a proposed P9,000 increase in their pay to P6,000, saying it will put them at a pay level below policemen and soldiers in the government’s salary scheme.

MANILA, Philippines – Green as far as the eye can see. This is what greets farmers every day at the Leonie Agri Corp. (LAC) farm, a 42-hectare verdant tract in the northern Nueva Ecija town of Sta. Rosa.

WASHINGTON – The recession is easing? Not so fast. An unexpected drop in sales of just about everything from cars to clothes sent a sobering message Tuesday: The economy is still vulnerable.

MANILA, Philippines – After stalling in January, inflows of remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) went up by 4.9 percent to $1.3 billion in February, bringing the two-month total to $2.6 billion, or 2.5 percent higher than a year ago level, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported yesterday.